We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction (Deus Caritas Est 1).
This first quote is perhaps my favorite. All of Pope Benedict XVI's writings were deeply Christ-centered, or Christocentric. He rightly saw the whole of the Christian life as a pursuit of communion with Jesus.
Thus Jesus himself is what we call "heaven"; heaven is not a place but a person, the person of him in whom God and man are forever and inseparably one. And we go to heaven and enter into heaven to the extent that we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him. In this sense, "ascension into heaven" can be something that takes place in our everyday lives… (Dogma and Preaching, Ignatius Press, 2011).
Once again, Pope Benedict XVI emphasizes that communion with the person of Jesus is the whole purpose of the Christian life. We do not turn to Jesus in order to get to Heaven; but turn to Heaven in order to get to Jesus. He is the end, not merely the means.
The saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scripture. The meaning of a given passage of the Bible becomes most intelligible in those human beings who have been totally transfixed by it and have lived it out. (Jesus of Nazareth, Doubleday, 2007)
Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict XVI, was trained as a biblical scholar. What distinguished him from many other scholars of Scripture, however, was his deep faith and reverence for the Word of God. Too often, scholars have made the mistake of approaching the Bible as a mere academic text, often with a skeptical eye. Pope Benedict XVI understood that Scripture, though able to be critically studied through the human sciences, remains a divinely inspired text.
In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place (Letter to the Bishops concerning Summorum Pontificum).
One of the defining characteristics of Pope Benedict XVI's pontificate was his great respect for tradition. While many in the Church since the 1960's have regarded the liturgy and theology of the past with suspicion or even disgust, Pope Benedict recognized that the Church of today cannot reject the Church of the past. As a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council, he understood that the Church must develop with time, but must do so in continuity with her tradition.
[E]ternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt [to imagine]. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy (Spe Salvi 12).
This final quote from Pope Benedict XVI is one of my favorite descriptions of eternal life. We sometimes mistakenly think of "eternity" as merely "a really long time," but eternal life is actually beyond time. This is a great mystery that we can only begin to imagine. As the Church continues to mourn Pope Benedict's death, may the Lord in his great mercy admit him into this eternal ocean of His love.